Monday, November 25, 2013

Faith Flicks: How to Train your Dragon

Sermon from Sunday, November 10th

Like all good movies
this is primarily a movie about relationships and the tension that is created
when there are misunderstandings and break downs in communication. It’s a movie about judging a book by its
cover and the assumptions that we often believe about something we don’t
understand whether those assumptions are true or not. It’s a movie about the fight against
ignorance and the challenges that arise when someone tries to bring knowledge
and understanding into a long tradition of ignorantly believed assumptions. It’s a movie about a father and a son. It’s a movie about brokenness and about the
connection created between two living beings that share the same weakness. And you thought it was about dragons and
Vikings.

The main character is
Hiccup. He’s a scrawny, nerdy, clumsy
teenage Viking who wants to fight dragons.
He’s not the dragon slaying type, he’s caring and inventive so he doesn’t
fit the mold of a dragon slayer. His
macho, alpha male dad, Stoik the Vast, will not let him join the fight. The reason they have to fight the dragons is
that the town is periodically raided by dragons. In this town the dragon slayers are the
professional athletes, the movie stars, the celebrities who everyone aspires to
be like. And Hiccup just doesn’t fit the
bill.

Hiccup ends up
capturing a dragon that had never been captured called a Night Fury. He captures it with one of his inventions and
he secretly visits the dragon to slay it.
What he discovers is that the dragon is injured and instead of killing
the dragon he ends up befriending the dragon and it becomes almost like his
pet. Hiccup names the dragon
Toothless. Toothless is a bit unpredictable,
and one second he’s nice and happy and the next he’s scary and could bite your
head off. He is however manipulated
through treats.

So this secret and
subversive relationship develops between Hiccup and toothless. And Hiccup ends up creating an invention that
helps toothless fly again and even allows him to ride the dragon. And through all of this Hiccup learns about
what dragons like and what they don’t like and it ends up being valuable to
him. His dad signs him up for dragon
training where he gets to learn to fight dragons. Instead he becomes like a dragon
whisperer…using the tools he’s learned from toothless to tame the dragons
instead of slaying them. This all comes
to a head when he is the top trainee in his class and has the honor of fighting
and slaying a big, furious dragon in front of the entire town.

Just
in case you haven’t seen the movie I will not ruin the ending for you, just
know it’s a great ending. There are
several themes in this movie I want us to look at this morning that I believe
are close to the heart of God.

I want to use this
movie as a platform to talk about assumptions that we make, in particular
regarding two issues. First, I want to
talk about the assumptions that some of us make that lead to racism. For me, the most obvious issue that this
movie addresses, whether intentionally or not, is racism. Racism is a sin of pride and arrogance. It’s the idea that I’m better than you simply
because of the color of the skin that I was born into. You did not choose to have the color of skin
that you have. And racism claims that
something a we cannot choose determines a person’s value, a person’s worth. And it is a sin and it is still prevalent in
our community, in our state and in our country.

If you are racist, if
you are prejudiced, you shouldn’t like Jesus very much, because he was not the
white, blonde hair, blue eyed, Swedish looking pretty boy that some pictures
show him to be. He was from the middle
east, he was arab…he had dark skin and dark brown eyes and dark brown
hair.

If you are racist you
shouldn’t like the Bible very much. Because it says things like this: “In
truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever
fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.” (Acts 10:28,34-35).

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither
slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28).

If you are racist, you
will not like heaven very much. Because
the bible says this: “After this I looked, and there before me was a great
multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and
language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were
wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation
7:9)

If you are racist, you
need to work on that. And the way to
work on that is to choose to get to know someone you are racist against. A person’s character is what dictates the kind
of person they are, not the color of their skin. In the movie it takes hiccup and toothless
understanding each other to break down the false assumptions that had
existed. There’s a great line in the
movie where hiccup says about the dragons:
“everything we knew about you…is wrong.”
Assumptions were made about the dragons that end up not being true in
the end.

Racism often stems from
assumptions towards a specific race that aren’t true about every person of that
color. There are good people in the
world and there are bad people in the world and skin color is not an indicator
of which is which. When you
automatically assume that you are superior and someone else is inferior, you
are playing God and there is only one God.
You also make God out to be a liar because God created us all in His
image. White, black, brown, red…all the
colors of human beings were created in the image of God. If you think someone is less than you because
of their race, you make God out to be a liar…and that’s dangerous. That could have eternal repercussions. We need to be careful about the assumptions
that we make about other people.

The other place we see
assumptions affecting the characters in the movie is in the relationship
between the father and the son. Hiccup and his father love each other but they
don’t know how to talk to each other.
They aren’t totally honest with each other and are sort of talking past
each other using very few words.

The father has
expectations for the son that are all about his own pride and arrogance and
agenda. And the expectations are unfair
for his son. You get the sense that this
big manly Viking named Stoik wishes he would have had a son that wasn’t so
gangly and clumsy and different from the rest of the teenagers in town.

By
the end of the movie the relationship has improved and the gifts that Hiccup
does have are appreciated by the father.
It’s a reminder to all of us as parents to be careful about the
expectations we have on our children.
Are the things we are pushing our opinions and our agendas or are they
about allowing our children to cultivate their gifts that God has given them
that may be different than what we as parents had hoped for for our children.

The
bottom line is that we need to spend time with our children and communicate our
love and affection for them. And there’s
this idea in our society that to be a man means you don’t show your love and
that’s hogwash. If you want to be a man,
a real man, you show your love and kiss and hug and cuddle your children. They need that affection from you as a
man. Whether you have daughters or
sons…those children need you men not just to tell them you love them but to show
them you love them. Take time to be
dad…a dad that is not afraid to let your children know they are loved. Our model for that kind of dad, that kind of
father is God. And when you think about
verses like 1 John 3 you can’t help but think that this is the kind of father
we should strive to be: “See what great love the Father has lavished on
us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”

It’s
easy to assume my children know I love them.
What if God had done that? What
if God had just said I’m going to just assume that the people I created know I
love them and I’m going to do nothing to show it. He would not have sent Jesus as a
demonstration of his love for us. Dad’s,
don’t be afraid to show your sons and daughters that you love them, God is the
example of the kind of love that we should have for our children. When you show them you love them you are
participating in the kind of love that God showed us. You can be manly and affectionate, in fact,
most women, most wives, will tell you that showing affection towards them and
towards their children actually makes you more manly. Don’t just assume the people you love know
you love them, tell them and show them.

Assumptions
can be insulting and can get us in trouble.
A married couple brought their 1 year old daughter to their parents to
stay for a couple of nights. They had
forgotten to bring diapers so after dropping off their daughter they went to
the store to buy diapers. They got to
the store and asked one of the employees, “where do you keep the diapers?” The lady looked at them and said “aisle 24.” When the couple got to aisle 24 they found
shelves full of adult diapers. The
employee assumed that sense they didn’t have a baby with them that they were
asking for adult diapers.

Whether it’s in how we
view someone of a different skin color or in assuming that because we love our
children, or assuming because we love our wife they know we love them. The people we love don’t know we love them
unless we tell them and show them. Let’s
be the kind of people that keep our assumptions in check so that we can honor
God with the way we live our lives.

No comments:

About Me

I serve as lead pastor of Covenant Community Church located in Asheville, NC. I am surrounded by a talented staff who make leading fun and exciting.
I'm married to a woman who has the most natural and genuine interest in people's lives of anyone I've ever known.
I get to father two beautiful daughters who make me laugh almost everyday.
In the little bit of me time I have I enjoy playing video games (especially Dota 2), watching movies, cheering on the Panthers (even when they were 1-16), playing tennis, basketball and eating at Chic-fil-a (seriously, I think its my favorite restaurant).